Movie of the Week: “The Tree of Life”

Terrence Malick worked slowly—there was a twenty-year gap between “Days of Heaven” (1978) and “The Thin Red Line” (1998)—until he got to “The Tree of Life,” from 2011, which I discuss in this clip. He worked on the film for a long time—he had ideas for it that went back to the eighties—but, once it was done, it set him on a new path that he has been travelling with a newfound speed. “To the Wonder” followed, in 2012; “Knight of Cups” premièred, at the Berlin Film Festival, this year, and he’s supposedly now editing another feature, set in Austin, Texas, and starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, and Michael Fassbender. Part of the spark is due to the newfound presence of sympathetic producers; part of it arises from Malick’s own new style—or, rather, from the new mode of production that goes with it. With “The Tree of Life,” Malick liberated his cinematic vision by going to its source. It’s a personal film that tells stories about Malick’s own life, but it also delves into the very origin of Malick’s imagination. It plays like a cinematic self-psychoanalysis. The main precedent is Jean-Luc Godard’s series “Histoire(s) du Cinéma,” which proved similarly liberating for Godard.